Additional Services
High-end stores such as Bloomingdales or Taylor & Lord often aim at turning the process of purchasing a piece of clothing into an exciting and delightful experience for their customers. To ensure client satisfaction, such stores add luxury services that go beyond selling traditional items. These may include:
- Personal styling;
- Same-day deliveries;
- Gift consultation and wrapping;
- Style trial — home delivery of a number of clothing pieces that a customer has chosen him- or herself or that were handpicked by an in-house stylist;
- Serving drinks such as champagne.
Personal styling may be one of the most common services offered at stores. Recently, it even left the realm of elite clothes and tapped into the mass market. Such popularity is easily explainable: customers find joy and pleasure in receiving special treatment and feeling that they matter. When a customer enters a store, he or she might have two issues: first, they are unsure as to what they would like to buy, and second, they are not familiar with what the store has to offer. A personal stylist considers a customer’s requests and makes up outfits out of the items available in stock.
Customer Lifetime Value
In the current economy, additional services do matter due to a well-described phenomenon titled customer lifetime value, or CLV. This term refers to the entire relationship that a company may have with a single customer and, therefore, the net profit that it can make if the relationship is maintained (Armstrong and Cotler 20). CLV relies heavily on a customer’s first impression and overall satisfaction. Additional services may enhance his or her experience as they add an emotional component to the venture. Thus, a customer may be more likely to return to the store and recommend it to friends and family.
Work Cited
Armstrong, Gary, and Phillip Cotler. Marketing: An Introduction. 7th ed., Pearson/ Prentice Hall, 2005.